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Syria's Bedouin enter the fray: how tribes could keep Syria together

Dawn Chatty

By now it is well known that Syria’s uprising turned civil war began with the government’s suppression of peaceful protests in the southern city of Deraa in March 2011 before spreading north to Homs and Hama. What is less familiar are the strong tribal links that these cities have to Syria’s Bedouin communities, which constitute some ten to 15 percent of the country’s population. In all three battlegrounds, Bedouin communities, already under siege for much of Syria’s modern history, resorted to armed self-defense against the forces of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.